National Informer guest columnist bares his soul and more.
This issue of National Informer was published today in 1974. In these later editions the editors seem to have discovered the value of a little dick, which is to say they began featuring male frontal nudes. The Pulp Intl. girlfriends used to wonder why we had so few nude men on the site. They actually thought it was up to us. We were like, “Baby, vintage actors didn't do nude promo shots.” Well, except for Fred Williamson, but he's Fred Williamson. Burt Reynolds did it for Cosmopolitan, but we don't have that shot because we don't collect Cosmo. So the best you get is these randos in low rent tabloids.
The models, whoever they were, got to experience what women had been experiencing for a long time, which was the shock of realizing their secret nudes had hit daylight on a drugstore newsstand without their knowledge—or financial remuneration. And as with the women, the photos were used in articles that had nothing to do with them. In this case the accompanying feature is about a porn actor who wants to move into legit cinema. It's a silly article filled with nothingness written by J.W.—presumably Johnny Wadd, aka John Holmes. At least that's what readers were supposed to think.
Do we buy it? Not really. For one, it reads like the same house hacks who wrote all Informer's articles (we love the part where he defines the term “persona non grata”), but second, why would a guy who's flashed his gooch to millions need to hide his identity? But it's very specific in terms of the hints the author drops, so maybe it really is him. But with or without Holmes, there's quality schlong on the anonymous model. The Pulp Intl. girlfriends say he could use a circumcision, but whatever, they can't say we never tried to give them some eye candy. More Informer coming later.
All the news that's fit to sucker people out of their cash.
Yellow press is a term for newspapers that presented little or no legitimate news, instead attracting readers with empty sensationalism. While the term was most widely used a century ago, 1960-70s tabloid National Informer may qualify. This issue was published today in 1974 and is pure sex from cover to cover. Among the jewels: “Is It Normal To Be a Girl Watcher?” and “Do Older or Younger Women Make the Best Sex Partners?” As always, the photos accompanying these stories are random handouts, but sometimes they feature semi-famous figures. In this case, one of the photos accompanying the girl watcher story is of glamour model Lois Mitchell. The other two models on that page are probably well known too, but we can't place them. In true yellow press tradition, there's nothing substantial in Informer at all, but as always, its nothingness is well worth documentation, which we've done with nineteen scans below. And yes, we have still more issues. We'll get to those later. Meanwhile, if you want to see more from National Informer, National Informer Weekly Reader, and more than four hundred other tabloids we've already uploaded, just click here.
When Mafia thugs take on Oklahoma roughnecks it's an oil or nothing battle to the death. We finally picked up a new scanner and life is good again. You may have noticed the difference in recent uploads. No moire patterns. No weird rainbows. All clean. You may also have noticed the website looks a bit different. We were making some changes over the holidays and got caught in the middle, but we'll finish everything as soon as we can and get it all working properly again. We know, we know. We're really slow with this stuff. But we'll get there. Meanwhile, today we have for your enjoyment an issue of Australia's Adam magazine, published this month in 1972 with a cover illustrating Martin Rudyard's tale “The Mafia Oil Stakes,” about an organized crime cartel trying to take over a group of Oklahoma oil fields. Most of the owners sell out, but one stubborn cuss refuses, and sabotage followed by violence soon results. The climactic fight takes place against the backdrop of an oil well conflagration. A femme fatale is at the root of all this craziness, and her name is Angela Fierce. Sometimes writers try a little too hard, don't they? The inside cover star, just above, is Lois Mitchell, someone we've been meaning to feature. She was a popular glamour model during the ’70s, and appeared in copious amounts of high quality images shot by men's magazine contributors Ron Vogel, Edmund Leja, and others. The photo appearing here is new to the internet as far as we can tell. We have thirty-some scans of today's Adam, forty-eight other issues inside the website, and about thirty more we plan on sharing down the line.
He only seems mean until you get to know him. When we first saw this poster for 1971’s The Godson, we were of course struck by its brutal nature. Then our realty filter kicked in and we realized that, though the art is a photo-illustration, an actress (Orita de Chadwick) probably wouldn’t sign up for that kind of abuse. Thankfully, our assumption was confirmed. The film frame used on the poster has been slightly but crucially altered to achieve a more violent effect. The reasons why an instance of sexual violence would be made to look even worse on a promo poster raises some disturbing marketing-related questions, but we’ll leave those for another time. Moving on to the actual film, The Godson is just a sexploitation flick with bad direction (William Rotsler), bad scripting (William Rotsler), bad editing (William Rotsler), and astoundingly bad acting (everyone). It’s the story of an ambitious mafia thug played by Jason Yukon trying to succeed in his godfather’s organization, and it all goes wrong in the end and everyone dies. Is that giving away too much? Well, at least we saved you 90 minutes. We'll say this much for Rotsler, though—he did nothing halfway, as a visit to his website will illustrate. Perhaps we should note that Uschi Digard and the awesomely beautiful Lois Mitchell appear in this film, super hot Debbie McGuire from Black Starlet and Supervixens gets a bit of screen time, and legendary sci-fi writer and firebrand Harlan Ellison pops up briefly (copping a feel of Mitchell, just below). Also, some of the film was shot at Ellison's bachelor pad. Does any of that make it worth watching? No. Besides, why bother when we've uploaded all the best parts for you? The Godson premiered in Japan today in 1972.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1931—Nevada Approves Gambling
In the U.S., the state of Nevada passes a resolution allowing for legalized gambling. Unregulated gambling had been commonplace in the early Nevada mining towns, but was outlawed in 1909 as part of a nationwide anti-gaming crusade. The leading proponents of re-legalization expected that gambling would be a short term fix until the state's economic base widened to include less cyclical industries. However, gaming proved over time to be one of the least cyclical industries ever conceived. 1941—Tuskegee Airmen Take Flight
During World War II, the 99th Pursuit Squadron, aka the Tuskegee Airmen, is activated. The group is the first all-black unit of the Army Air Corp, and serves with distinction in Africa, Italy, Germany and other areas. In March 2007 the surviving airmen and the widows of those who had died received Congressional Gold Medals for their service. 1906—First Airplane Flight in Europe
Romanian designer Traian Vuia flies twelve meters outside Paris in a self-propelled airplane, taking off without the aid of tractors or cables, and thus becomes the first person to fly a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Because his craft was not a glider, and did not need to be pulled, catapulted or otherwise assisted, it is considered by some historians to be the first true airplane. 1965—Leonov Walks in Space
Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov leaves his spacecraft the Voskhod 2 for twelve minutes. At the end of that time Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could not re-enter Voskhod's airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the suit's pressure to bleed off, was barely able to get back inside the capsule, and in so doing became the first person to complete a spacewalk. 1966—Missing Nuke Found
Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the deep submergence vehicle Alvin locates a missing American hydrogen bomb. The 1.45-megaton nuke had been lost by the U.S. Air Force during a midair accident over Palomares, Spain. It was found resting in nearly three-thousand feet of water and was raised intact on 7 April.
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